This invention relates to devices for packaging elongated articles and more specifically to devices for aligning elongated articles, such as frozen french fries, in a parallel orientation prior to packaging.
In the past, it has been the common practice to package elongated frozen food particles, such as french fries, in randomly oriented batches of uniform weight. This method of packaging is both wasteful of packaging materials and potentially damaging to those elongated articles which are frangible. When packaged in a random orientation, elongated articles are routinely subject to settling during transit. If packages containing the articles are made of a flexible material, the packages may collapse as the articles settle. When several such packages are included in a rigid walled shipping container, collapse of the packages allows air cavities to develop between the packages and walls of the container. As a result, the packages can move about inside the rigid container so that normal jolts which occur during shipping cause an unnecessarily large number of potentially damaging impacts between the packages and the container walls. Even if the packages are not collapsible, settling increases the potential for product damage because air spaces develop within such packages allowing the articles room to move about.
One way to eliminate settling is to align the articles in a parallel orientation prior to packaging; and attempts have been made to provide apparatuses to accomplish such an alignment. As an example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,732,163 to Senzani shows a packaging system which maintains spaghetti in a parallel orientation. Apparatuses of this type are expensive, highly complex and can be used economically only if parallel alignment of a particular product is absolutely essential.